Her work is itself a series of contradictions, its repetitive, haunting fugues are undercut constantly by a playful melodicism which might then grow more discordant and frenetic, all morphing naturally, unfolding from itself.

Through his many years of genre-bending melodicism with Mr. Costello – from staccato punk to Farfisa soul to their most recent incarnation as a kind of post-punk cabaret duo – Mr. Nieve has grown to embrace the somewhat silly moniker.

Their marriage, and her absorption into the band as a guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter, beginning with the excellent Perverted By Language, helped shift the Fall from droning, atonal minimalism to droning, atonal melodicism.

The New York Times wrote that "The team's finest songs are marked by a contemporary conversational fluency and precision of phrase, joined to a graceful Old World melodicism that looks back often wistfully to the turn-of-the-century operetta."

The sensational drug-and-sex items (especially "Heroin") got most of the ink, but the more conventional numbers showed Reed to be a songwriter capable of considerable melodicism, sensitivity, and almost naked introspection.